Roebuck, wild goat, ibex, antelope, camel,
hare, raven, ostrich, stork, hoopoe, bat,
orangutans and breakfast cereals: all of these (okay, almost
all)
are in this week's Torah portion, which I'll be reading on
Saturday. I'm finding that these unfamiliar nouns make
the Torah prep slow going. This would all be easier to learn if I were better at Hebrew zoology.

These verses of
parashat Re'eh
focus on which animals are permitted, and which forbidden,
according to the Jewish dietary laws (kashrut).Brillat-Savarin wasn't talking about kashrut when he said, "Tell me what you eat, and I'll tell you what you are," but his quip works surprisingly well to explain the system's underlying principle. Since forbidden animals are considered tam'ei (ritually impure), the system of kashrut is a way of keeping ourselves pure as befits a community which is consecrated unto God. We are what we eat, so we'd better eat things which are clean.

Someday I'm going to write a long essay
on kashrut: how it evolved, different understandings of its reasonings
(or whether there's even supposed to be a reasoning behind it),
arguments for why one might choose to abide by it and arguments
for why one might not. But to do it right, I'll need mad Talmud
skillz, so it's going to be a while. Meanwhile, I still need to lead a Torah study
session about it on Shabbat morning, so I dug up some contemporary
commentary on the dietary laws that I hope will get conversation going.

Kosher laws teach that eating is a sanctified act, subject to
restrictions in order to maintain spiritual holiness. This
principle can be used to guide all of our consumption to accord
with social and environmental values. The practice of Eco Kashrut
helps sanctify consumption, so we can elevate the physical world by
acknowledging the holiness of our relationship to God's world.

The mitzvah of shmirat haguf (safeguard the body)
encourages
healthy eating and an awareness of the food we eat. This includes
seeking food that was grown organically, without pesticides, and
avoiding food additives, preservatives, coloring agents and
artificial flavors. It also includes learning about what foods are
healthiest, and choosing a plant-based diet of foods that are
fresh, organic, and nutritious...

The passage goes on to talk about the mitzvah of bal
tachshit ("do not waste") and about the commandment not to cause suffering
to other beings. (Read the whole thing
here.) Our food, these folks are saying, is not kosher unless it is farmed sustainably and humanely, in an atmosphere of respect for the labor which brings it forth. (The folks at the Shalom Center have some writings on this, including this piece on kashrut and justice.)

I'm curious to see what people think of eco-kashrut: does it
resonate? Is it a reasonable extension of traditional kashrut, or
is it something else entirely? If a guy strove to eat only foods which are grown and harvested in consonance with biodynamic standards, but made the occasional organic cheeseburger a part of his diet, could he call his diet "eco-kosher"? What does it imply about our relationship with halakhah, Jewish Law or the Jewish way-of-walking, if we accept this kind of revisioning?

The next part of the handout moves into a different part of the kashrut conversation. It consists of a long-ish excerpt
from
Marvin Harris' book
Cows, Pigs, Wars, and Witches. Harris argues that the real reason pork isn't
kosher (or halal) is that pig
farming threatened the integrity of the Middle Eastern ecosystem.

Pastoral nomadism, he points out, happens in places which are too dry for agriculture and can't be
irrigated easily. Ruminants are well-adapted to this kind of
land (and the climate that goes along with it) because they can happily subsist on leaves and grass. Cows and goats
eat stuff humans can't digest, and turn it into stuff that humans
can. Pigs, in contrast, eat nuts, fruits,
tubers, and grains: the same things we do. They compete with
humans for scarce natural resources. (Plus, pigs don't give milk
and can't easily be herded).

What's more, pigs are "thermodynamically ill-adapted
to the climate of the Negev, the Jordan Valley, and the other
lands of the Bible and the Koran."
Pigs don't self-cool, so in hot places they need to wallow in order
to stay healthy. But where water is scarce, using it to cool one's pigs is wasteful to the point of risking human harm.
To close out his argument, Harris writes:

The greater the temptation, the greater the need for divine
interdiction. This relationship is generally accepted as suitable
for explaining why the gods are always so interested in combating
sexual temptations such as incest and adultery...The Middle East is
the wrong place to raise pigs, but pork remains a succulent treat.
People always find it difficult to resist such temptations on their
own. Hence Jahweh was heard to say that swine were unclean, not
only as food, but to the touch as well. Allah was heard to repeat
the same message for the same reason: it was ecologically
maladaptive to raise pigs.

It's an interesting piece of reasoning, and it's an argument
I hadn't heard before. (Hat tip to Atanu Dey, who recommended the book when we met back in February.) Of course, many Jews would argue that looking for a logical
basis for the dietary laws misses the point entirely. We aren't supposed to understand; we're supposed to
transform our lives by the act of obedience regardless.
As it is written in Judaism
101:

The short answer to why Jews observe these laws is: because the
Torah says so. The Torah does not specify any reason for these
laws, and for a Torah-observant, traditional Jew, there is no need
for any other reason. Some have suggested that the laws of kashrut
fall into the category of chukim, laws for which there is no
reason. We show our obedience to God by following these laws even
though we do not know the reason.

In To Be a Jew, Rabbi Hayim Halevy Donin suggests that the dietary
laws are designed as a call to holiness. The ability to distinguish
between right and wrong, good and evil, pure and defiled, the
sacred and the profane, is very important in Judaism. Imposing
rules on what you can and cannot eat ingrains that kind of self
control, requiring us to learn to control even our most basic,
primal instincts.

According to this interpretation, the value of kashrut lies in submitting oneself to it even though it may not make sense. There's a paradoxical freedom to be found in submission, the theory goes, (does this look familiar to my Muslim readers?) and the Jewish community has always defined itself as that community which is bound by the mitzvot. Then again, some would argue that mitzvot like kashrut, which set Jews apart from others, take on a problematic cast in a world where separatism leads to divisiveness and hence to suffering. These aren't easy viewpoints to reconcile.

After reading the eco-kashrut manifesto, the Harris quote,
and the Judaism 101 quote, I'll be intrigued to see whether
people in the congregation are more comfortable with kashrut
if there's a reason for the laws, or if there isn't. (Feel free to chime in on that point, obviously. Or any other, for that matter.) We probably won't have time to touch on the question of sanctifying food through brachot (blessings) -- that's a whole 'nother conversation...

Most of the verses we'll be discussing have to do with
commandments concerning which animals to eschew and which to, um, chew. (Sorry. Couldn't resist.) Only one tiny verse, the last
five words I'll be reading aloud, relate to the question of mixing
milk and meat: lo-t'vashel g'dei bachelev imo, "You shall
not boil a kid in its mothers' milk." From this half-line (plus two other brief kid/milk mentions in Torah) come hundreds of customs relating to the
separation of milkhik from fleishik! Maybe I'll close the discussion with
this old kashrut joke...

Comments

Re'eh: thoughts on kashrut

Roebuck, wild goat, ibex, antelope, camel,
hare, raven, ostrich, stork, hoopoe, bat,
orangutans and breakfast cereals: all of these (okay, almost
all)
are in this week's Torah portion, which I'll be reading on
Saturday. I'm finding that these unfamiliar nouns make
the Torah prep slow going. This would all be easier to learn if I were better at Hebrew zoology.

These verses of
parashat Re'eh
focus on which animals are permitted, and which forbidden,
according to the Jewish dietary laws (kashrut).Brillat-Savarin wasn't talking about kashrut when he said, "Tell me what you eat, and I'll tell you what you are," but his quip works surprisingly well to explain the system's underlying principle. Since forbidden animals are considered tam'ei (ritually impure), the system of kashrut is a way of keeping ourselves pure as befits a community which is consecrated unto God. We are what we eat, so we'd better eat things which are clean.

Someday I'm going to write a long essay
on kashrut: how it evolved, different understandings of its reasonings
(or whether there's even supposed to be a reasoning behind it),
arguments for why one might choose to abide by it and arguments
for why one might not. But to do it right, I'll need mad Talmud
skillz, so it's going to be a while. Meanwhile, I still need to lead a Torah study
session about it on Shabbat morning, so I dug up some contemporary
commentary on the dietary laws that I hope will get conversation going.